Singapore biggest new BT jobs beneficiary

SINGAPORE, 22 DECEMBER 2010 - Singapore will be the biggest beneficiary of plans by global telco BT to employ an extra 300 people in the Asia Pacific.

While refusing to specify precise new employee numbers for each country, a BT spokesman says the rollout of new jobs is on-going.

To date we have already hired more than 25 per cent of our target number of new hires, the spokesman said. Singapore is the largest single beneficiary of these new hires.

Singapore is the headquarters for BT's South East Asia operations. BT has a strong presence in the region with customers including Standard Chartered, BASF, DHL, Scicom, Medco Energi, Bangkok Bank, Thomson Reuters, DBS and PSA.

According to a previous statement, BT says it sees the addressable market for its services in Asia Pacific around GBP 8 billion (S$16.24 billion US$12.38 billion), with annual growth rates of 6 per cent.

Innovation resources

Enhancing our senior professional services, industry sector and innovation resources will form a key part of the plan, the statement said.

BT chief executive Ian Livingston said that BT has seen strong growth in its Asia Pacific operations. Following an expansion of operations in this region in the early 2000s, BT's South East Asia business (comprising Singapore, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam), has grown significantly.

The region will be a key engine of growth for the world economy, Livingstone said. We are already providing the infrastructure and capabilities to help global multinationals expand in the Asia Pacific region.

We expect to see more companies from the area expand both regionally and globally. This should be the decade of the Asian multinational and BT will be there to assist them.

The company currently employs about 5,000 specialists delivering services in 18 countries, with an additional 25,000 people indirectly employed by BT in the Asia pacific region. Core service offerings in the region include convergence solutions, customer relationship management (CRM), conferencing, outsourcing, security, IT transformation and mobility.